Korean J Radiol.  2011 Jun;12(3):289-296. 10.3348/kjr.2011.12.3.289.

Fractal Dimension Analysis of MDCT Images for Quantifying the Morphological Changes of the Pulmonary Artery Tree in Patients with Pulmonary Hypertension

Affiliations
  • 1Shandong University, Shandong Medical Imaging Research Institute, CT Room, Shandong, PR China. liucheng491025@sina.com

Abstract


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to use fractal dimension (FD) analysis on multidetector CT (MDCT) images for quantifying the morphological changes of the pulmonary artery tree in patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH).
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Fourteen patients with PH and 17 patients without PH as controls were studied. All of the patients underwent contrast-enhanced helical CT and transthoracic echocardiography. The pulmonary artery trees were generated using post-processing software, and the FD and projected image area of the pulmonary artery trees were determined with ImageJ software in a personal computer. The FD, the projected image area and the pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) were statistically evaluated in the two groups.
RESULTS
The FD, the projected image area and the PAP of the patients with PH were higher than those values of the patients without PH (p < 0.05, t-test). There was a high correlation of FD with the PAP (r = 0.82, p < 0.05, partial correlation analysis). There was a moderate correlation of FD with the projected image area (r = 0.49, p < 0.05, partial correlation analysis). There was a correlation of the PAP with the projected image area (r = 0.65, p < 0.05, Pearson correlation analysis).
CONCLUSION
The FD of the pulmonary arteries in the PH patients was significantly higher than that of the controls. There is a high correlation of FD with the PAP.

Keyword

Computed tomography (CT); Pulmonary hypertension; Fractal dimension

MeSH Terms

Adult
Aged
Case-Control Studies
Contrast Media/diagnostic use
Female
*Fractals
Humans
Hypertension, Pulmonary/*radiography
Iohexol/analogs & derivatives/diagnostic use
Male
Middle Aged
Pulmonary Artery/*radiography
Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted/*methods
*Tomography, Spiral Computed

Figure

  • Fig. 1 Bone and pulmonary veins were marked in blue and removed with bone removal tool (A). 3D pulmonary artery trees from patients with pulmonary hypertension (B) and without pulmonary hypertension (C) were obtained after vessel segmentation.

  • Fig. 2 Coronal projection of 2D pulmonary artery from patient with pulmonary hypertension (A), binary view of 2D projection (B) and graph of fractal dimension was obtained by box-counting method (C).

  • Fig. 3 Pulmonary arterial pressure (PAP) was plotted against projected image area of pulmonary arteries. There was correlation of pulmonary arterial pressure with projected image area (r = 0.65, p < 0.05, Pearson).


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